


The Fine Art of Poisoning

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-06
Updated: 2005-12-06
Packaged: 2019-01-19 14:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12411762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Father and son, that was a relationship born of genetics.





	The Fine Art of Poisoning

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

**Title:** The Fine Art of Poisoning [ I / I ]  
 **Author:** **_carondelet_** // **_carondelet11_**  
 **Character(s) / Pairing:** Draco Malfoy, Milicent Bulstrode, Pansy Parkinson  
 **Rating:** PG-13 (adult situations inferred)  
 **Word Count:** 2,100   
**Spoilers:** Books 1-6  
 **Summary:** Father and son, that was a relationship born of genetics.  
 **Notes:** originally published 15 June 2005 // 1705  
 **Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters, settings, and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling as published by, including and not limited, to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. The use of these characters and settings is for entertainment purposes only; no infringement is intended or should be inferred.

 

**_____________________________________**

**THE FINE ART OF POISONING**

[] THE STRAPPINGS WILL ALL COME OFF

**_____________________________________**

  
_“Sometimes I’m so terrified of my heart Of it’s constant hunger for whatever it is it wants The way it stops... ...and starts.”�_

Poe, **Terrified Heart**  


**He clenched and** unclenched his hands into fists. Sweat appeared on his brow. He hated this. He hated this feeling.

He hated feeling like this.

He could still feel his father’s glare bearing down upon him. Why did he always look at him like that? As if he were an insect? As if he were worthless?

_As if he were nothing?_

He didn’t mean anything to him. Father and son, that was a relationship born of genetics. Nothing more. He was his son in genes only. He was nothing. He was useless.

Draco Malfoy hung his head and tried his best not to cry. **8** **He was happy** that he was alone in the train car. He couldn’t handle feeling so miserable in front of anyone. Not Crabbe, not Goyle, not Bulstrode ( _Merlin, not Bulstrode, the pig_ ), and certainly not Parkinson.

Parkinson. Pansy. Pansy Parkinson.

How could...how could his own father favor a stranger to his own flesh and blood? How could his father be moved to smile and to laugh with the sullen girl with dark silken hair and deep blue eyes?

How? How could he? _What in the bloody hell was wrong with him?_

Malfoy just hear footsteps in the corridor outside of his compartment. The doors would open soon. He knew they would. He prepared himself to face whomever might be waiting on the other side.

“Bulstrode.”�

With a ‘hrmph’ and a toss of her unremarkable, coarse hair, Millicent Bulstrode strode into the train car. “Hello, Malfoy.”�

She always called him that. Or, she called him “Little Lord Malfoy”� when she thought he couldn't hear her.

Very few people called him by his first name.

Always, forever, inseparable from his father.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?”� he asked her, putting a sneer into his tone.

“Am I?”� She sounded incredulous that he would ask such a thing. Bulstrode smirked and placed her hands upon her hips. “I was ready the day I was born, Malfoy. Tomorrow, you and the Ice Princess will get to see what a real duellist looks like.”�

The Ice Princess. Her name for Parkinson. It was actually...fitting.

“But of course,”� Draco murmured.

Bulstrode positioned her considerable bulk in front of Malfoy and poked him in the chest with her index finger. “What did you say?”�

It took all of the Malfoy bearing and grace to keep from snapping the girl's beefy finger into three pieces. “I said that you are looking as lovely and dainty as usual today, Millicent,”�

“Is that so?”� Bulstrode leaned in close so that her face was inches from his. “Don’t you know that when you say your sweet little nothings in that tone of voice you are practically screaming that you mean the opposite?”�

Her nostrils flared and Malfoy was reminded of a painting, one of the Minotaur, he once saw in a Muggle museum that he and mother and father had been coaxed into visiting.

He gave her a little shrug and decided to play coy as a bit of sport. “I suppose so. That’s what Parkinson’s always telling me.”�

“Is that so?”� She scrunched her nose, another most unflattering mannerism, though Malfoy was hard pressed to think of a facial expression that Bulstrode could put on that would be flattering. “Well, I suppose Parkinson’s right about that.”�

At least that shut her up for a moment.

Malfoy levelled a cool glance out of the carriage window, not so much watching the landscape blur in his vision as not wanting to look at Bulstrode’s beastly face.

_She would never wear the Dark Lord’s true favour_ , he thought wryly. _She’s far too piggish for it. She’d make a better foot soldier than a plaything_.

He kept his face neutral as the import of his words settled in. He wondered if his mother wore the Other Mark.

He placed his elbow on the window’s ledge and put his fingers across his lips. No, he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to think of her or even of his father as Death Eaters.

He was sick of it.

They were better than the Mudbloods, than the Muggles. Why did they have to perform an obeisance to some…thing in order to prove that?

_**Blasphemous thoughts, Draco.** _

_Bully for me. Besides, if he’s so utterly powerful, he can take a look right now. He might be a Legilimens, but he can’t look in the heart of every man at the same time. He’s no god._

_He’s just a wizard._

_A Mudblood wizard at that._

_**The most profane of the obscenities. For that he would surely kill you, Draco.** _

_His blood is poisoned, so he deigns to poison ours through subjugation and veneration. Fine. Let him do what he will. Let him come. Put a simpering child out of his torment, his misery. Let the high and mighty stoop so low as to smite me, Little Lord Malfoy._

He snorted.

“What’s so funny?”� demanded Bulstrode.

He turned from the window and arched an eyebrow. “Still here, are you? I was laughing at the fact that you’ve been doing nothing more than staring at me for the last five minutes. Shall we set the wedding date now? Or should we wait until you tell Flint of our love affair?”�

Bulstrode narrowed her already beady eyes and scowled at him. “You are disgusting, Malfoy. I don’t know why I waste my time with you.”� She snorted at him, reinforcing the image of the Minotaur in his mind, and stamped out of the compartment. She slammed the door to a close.

“Oh, darling, you wound me so!”� Malfoy called after her.

There was no response, just the sound of wheels against track.

Malfoy stared at the door for a moment, unblinking. Then he turned and faced the window and observed the passing of the night. **8** **The movement, the** chill, the endless variations on blue-grey winter’s scene that whirred by…he had fallen into a state of semi-consciousness.

Traveling by rail had always proven hypnotic to Draco. It was not something worthy of mention.

Ephemeral memories of laughter and birdsong and grass and chamomile flickered through his recollect. The memories were veiled in a shroud. He was uncertain if he was remembering events or wishes never meant to be.

He did not notice the door as is slowly drew open.

He did not notice the presence, delicate, remote, as it stepped into the compartment.

The moon broke through the clouds that were choking her and cast her pale countenance upon him.

He looked across the compartment.

Pansy was sitting there, with her hands folded primly in her lap, her legs crossed at the ankles.

Watching him.

She blinked at him.

He returned her gaze, implacable.

Draco was impressed at the lack of surprise he registered. “Hello,”� he said.

“Hello,”� she replied.

Her voice reminded him of spice. Nutmeg, cinnamon, clove. 

“What do you want?”�

“The other compartments were full. I didn’t want to talk to anyone or have to listen to them prattle on.”�

He arched an eyebrow, his trademark move. “So you came here to ignore and to be ignored?”�

“Is there no better place than with you?”�

_Well played._ It was something his father would indeed appreciate.

“And here I was, thinking you wanted to use me for a snog.”�

“Twiddling my thumbs is of greater excitement for me.”�

“Oh, fine, then,”� he sighed melodramatically. “If you are going to be moody, do just sit there and be quiet.”�

There was a pause, and then, “Quiet and still. Just the way you like them.”� She had nearly whispered it.

He stared at her, a hint of warning in his expression.

She stared back, a look of daring in her eyes.

_Ask me what I mean by that._

He could read it on her face.

He narrowed a glance at her. _Why should I ask?_

She tilted her head at him. _Why wouldn’t you?_

“What did you mean by that?”� he heard himself say to her.

The faintest wrinkle of a smile twitched in a corner of Pansy’s mouth. “I think you know,”� she said softly.

Her lips were unadorned by colour. They were the colour of a sun-faded rose, a natural compliment to her fair skin.

Pale, sullen girl.

“Why do you think that?”�

“Because you know what he is like.”�

_He. She could mean anyone. She could mean **him**. What does she mean?_

Malfoy drew in a shallow breath and tried not to swallow too loudly. “I do, now? And who, pray tell, is your mystery man?”�

“Don’t be so egregiously obtuse, Draco, you and I have no need for pretence here. We are neither prostituting ourselves as examples before our contemporaries nor scraping, prostrate, before our elders. It is just you and me and the truth that hangs between us.”� Her face was emotionless, but there had been the barest hint of a quiver in her tone.

Their roles. Hers as a snobbish prig; his as a brash fop. Practice; inveigle; practice; obfuscate; practice; eliminate. All behind a lie.

_Don’t touch it. Leave it be. She is trying to trap you._

“What truth is that?”� His tone was flat. It barely registered as a question.

She stood, walked over to him, and placed her hands on the seat back to either side of him. Parkinson leaned in close, her nose barely an inch away from his. Draco didn’t withdraw. He simply glared at her. He was unused to being the one not in control.

She looked into his eyes and said, “The truth of our existence. That we are nothing but accessories, of no use to our parents or to **him** than as a body, warm or cold.”�

She was bereft of scent, yet she smelled like fresh linen. There was the trace of bergamot on her breath.

“You shouldn’t say such things, Pansy, someone might hear you and take your smart little head off.”� It was one last stab at bravado, though he didn’t entirely mean it with the disdain he used to speak it.

She turned her head to the side. He could feel her breathing, could feel it dance across his skin. She was warm; the compartment was cold. “If only they would, Draco,”� she murmured, “for they would be doing me a favour.”�

He stared at her, his lips parted slightly in disbelief.

_She must be taunting me, tempting me, trying to draw me out. This is not possible. Not the darling of my father. Not Parkinson._

“You shouldn’t say such things,”� he repeated in a whisper.

“Did I strike too close to home?”�

“Stop being ridiculous.”�

“So you are the faithful servant? The acolyte to the snake?”�

Pansy slowly turned her head in the other direction, her eyes never leaving Draco’s. She was still very close to him. Too close to him.

“Of course I am,”� he said to her. “I’m as faithful as you are.”�

She sucked in a breath. Her lips nearly brushed his. When she sighed, he felt his stomach clench and his hands closed into fists.

_Not you. Not you. Never you._

_Either leave or be done with it, woman. Do not make me suffer this damnable waiting._

“Of course you are,”� she said.

She withdrew and stood before him, her hands folded across her breasts. She stared down at him, her blue eyes clouded and indistinct.

Draco stared up at her, his hands still closed, his features blank.

Parkinson appeared as though she wanted to say something more, but she shook her head, and lazily exited the compartment. She turned, faced him one last time, and wordlessly drew the door to a close.

Malfoy stared after her, his mind spinning with questions and theories, all beginning and ending with one word: why.

She meant something to him.

To his father.

He didn’t mean anything to him. But **she** did.

And he knew why.

Father and son, a relationship built upon genetics and the need to sate bourgeois principles of consanguinity and heritage and cleansing. Hypocrites. He was nothing to his father other than a named inheritor. **She** was something.

He knew why. The Ice Princess had thawed before him, had granted him audience. For her designs he was certain.

**She** meant something to his father. For she was stronger and more dangerous that he could ever hope to be.

Malfoy relaxed his posture and returned to staring out of the train compartment window, watching the winter’s vista, wishing for that temporary oblivion.

It was better to be enchanted by the chill outside than to fall victim to the one within.

 

**”**


End file.
